tucker: one of the biggest moments of the current presidency occurred this week with supreme court justice anthony kennedy announcing that he is retiring from the court. for many conservatives, supreme court nominations were the single most important issue of the last election. the reason they voted. they will be watching this very closely. who are the front-runners to replace justice kennedy and what do we know about them? joining us now is someone who knows answers. leonard leo is outside adviser to the president on the judicial nominations and joins us. thank you for coming on. we are hearing a number of names batted around. amy barrett is at the top of every list i read in the last two days. tell me what do we know about amy barrett? amy barrett is a judge on the 7th circuit in the midwest in chicago. she is from indiana. very distinguished law professor from notre dame law school. clerked for antonin scalia.
didn t even write in. and so i just want to mention that kennedy in some ways seemed to be withdrawing from the court during this term in terms of aggressive approach. now, going forward, we know several names on the list. they have been on for a while. and there are two right away that i ll mention who happen to be former law clerks of justice kennedy s. a breck cavanaugh, ray ketlidge on the u.s. court of appeals. some of the names that we ve seen come up to lower court appointments since president trump came into office for example a woman by the name of barrett, she was a notre dame law professor who is now on the 7th circuit based in the midwest. so they have names that they have vetted in certain ways.
about he thought it would be better to move quickly. back with our panel. kristen welker, again, the president answering halle jackson there saying hey i hadn t thought about the timing. my sense is this is a white house like the entire political world that has been waiting on this word from anthony kennedy for a long time and probably has a clear idea of what he would like to do here. i would think so, steve. and you heard him talk about the fact that he does have a list of about 25 people, that likely a reference to the list he put out during the campaign. 25 people. we have it right here. a number of judges across the country. amy coney barrett of indiana, the u.s. kofrtd appeals from the seventh circuit. keith blackwell of georgia, supreme court of georgia. raymond deathe ledge, from the 6th circuit. this is a group of 25 names, men and women. this list, though, was put together by the heritage
d.c. court of appeals. a former professor at my alma merit, notre dame, amy barrett, was just nominated to the 7th circuit. she s already gone through the senate process very recently and passed it. she might be a consideration, too. but that s what they will be looking for. people that fit this mold. younger judges who can be on the court for decades and affect the outcome. remember, with the loss of kennedy, kennedy was the coin flip in many of these cases. now you re surely going to have someone who s going to lean more conservative and it will change the equilibrium of the court. we ve got harry lippman, a former u.s. attorney, he once clerked for justice kennedy. the potential to change here, to move to the right the balance of the court with this retirement, with donald trump making the selection with the republican senate poised potentially, likely to confirm it.
patrol needs. sandra: congressman, a federal court just ruled against the trump administration s crackdown on these sanctuary city laws. how big of a setback do you think that is going to be? they ruled narrowly in the 7th circuit. what they did is said you can t do it retroactively. to the extent that a grant has not been granted they didn t prohibit it from being a consideration. and to the extent there is new authorization from congress, those grants absolutely can and should have a hook in them about cooperation with law enforcement. the amazing thing is my governor wants money to help with ms-13 while my governor is causing these criminals to be released back on the street. you can t have it both ways. you can t say you need help from the feds to deal with criminals and then release them came i m sorry we re looking at 2/3 came from california, 89